Before many years have passed, the coasts of New Zealand will be as adequately protected as is humanly possible by a complete chain of coastal lights, which is being forged as rapidly as the circumstances permit. The Government has revised its light-dues in order to meet the increased expenditure in connection with the lighthouse service. Vessels arriving from outside the Dominion have to pay oversea light-dues at the first port of call, and coastal dues at all other New Zealand ports which they touch; while vessels arriving from the Chatham, Auckland, Campbell, Antipodes, and Bounty Islands also have to contribute to the funds. CHAPTER XIX THE SIGNPOSTS OF THE SANDBANKS Although by dint of great effort and the expenditure of considerable ingenuity the lighthouse engineer has succeeded in erecting a permanent masonry tower upon a foundation no more substantial than quicksand, yet the general method of indicating these menaces is by the aid of a lightship. In this way the estuaries leading to the great ports of the world, which are littered with ridges, humps, and mounds, of mud and sand brought down by the river or thrown up by the sea, are guarded very completely. There is the Nore lightship at the entrance to the Thames, the Bar and North-West lightships off the mouth of the Mersey, Fire Island near the portal to New York, and so on. Similarly, the whereabouts of huge stretches of sand lying off a coast, which either defy detection altogether or only partially expose themselves at low-water, and which constitute certain death-traps, are shown. The most striking illustrations of this application are supplied by the Goodwin Sands, the submerged sandy plateau lying off the east coast of England, and by the serried rows of ridges running seven and a half miles out to sea from Cape Hatteras, the ill-famed headland of North Carolina.